"Leave
acrobatics to others, Anna...It is positively more than I can bear to
see the pressure such steps put upon your delicate muscles and the arch
of your foot...I beg you never to try again to imitate those who are physically
stronger than you. You must realize that your daintiness and fragility
are your greatest assets. You should always do the kind of dancing which
brings out your own rare qualities instead of trying to win praise by
mere acrobatic tricks."

Thus was young Anna Pavlova admonished by her teacher, Pavel Gerdt.1
She followed this good advice and became a legend - indisputably one of
the great ballerinas of the twentieth century and also one of ballet's
most influential ambassadors. Pavlova's emotional, expressive, ecstatic
style thrilled audiences all over the world, despite its lack of showy,
virtuoso technique. In fact Pavlova didn't have a lot of technique; her
famous feet were actually quite weak. But she had passion, a complete
commitment to her art and the power to communicate through movement.

At a time when fouettés were fashionable but Romanticism was not,
when strong, meaty Italian ballerinas were favored and thin, dainty Russian
girls weren't, Pavlova resurrected the ethereal, delicate qualities of
the Romantic ballerina and combined them with her enormously expressive
style. Then she took it on the road. No dancer, before or since, traveled
as extensively: 350,000 miles in fifteen years - and this was long before
people used airplanes for traveling. She introduced ballet to remote crevices
of the world and inspired balletomania thousands of miles from her native
Russia. Sir Frederick Ashton, the brilliant choreographer and director
of England's Royal Ballet, became a dancer because he was smitten by the
performances he saw Pavlova give when he was a boy - in Lima, Peru.2

Anna
Pavlova was born on January 31, 1881 in a suburb of St. Petersburg. Her
mother took little Anna to a performance of The Sleeping Beauty
at the Maryinsky Theatre (home of the Kirov Ballet) and the child resolved
that some day she herself would be the beautiful Princess Aurora. She
had to wait several years before the Imperial School of the Maryinsky
Ballet would accept her, and even then her weak feet, poor turn-out, scrawny
body and bad placement made her ballet career seem dubious. Pavlova was
also said to be shy, unsociable, introverted and therefore without many
friends.3

She graduated form the Maryinsky School not long after the invasion of
the virtuoso Italian ballerinas - Legnani, Zucchi et al. had mastered
multiple fouettés and other technical "tricks" that diminished
the public's desire for lyrical Romanticism and created a demand for the
muscular Italian style. Pavlova hadn't the strength for it; her delicate,
highly arched feet were too weak for the flamboyant pointework coming
into vogue.

But ultimately Pavlova made such a virtue of her over-arched feet that
critics said they represented the yearnings of the Russian soul.4
She cleverly devised a shank and platform for her pointe shoes that conserved
her energy and let her balance in arabesque until the audience was breathless.
She took advantage of what she did have: extension, ballon, a pliable
torso, feminine delicacy, tremendous expressiveness and she worked extremely
hard, studying with Gerdt, Christian Johannsen, Nicholas Legat, Catarina
Beretta and the great Petipa himself. In the end she triumphed.

Pavlova
excelled in the repertory at the Maryinsky, especially in La Bayadere,
Giselle, Le Corsaire and Don Quixote but dancing
the choreography of Mikhail Fokine is what made her immortal. Les Sylphides
(also known as Chopiniana), showcased Pavlova's exquisite Romantic-style
lyricism. The Dying Swan went even further. Quickly choreographed
as a piece d' occasion, The Dying Swan is technically just
a matter or bourrés and highly stylized port-de-bras meant to evoke
the last moments in the life of a swan. The dancer, alone on stage in
her spotlight, bourrés forward and back, torso bending expressively,
arms extended in a nonstop, soft-elbowed birdlike fluttering until she
gracefully expires - usually in a seated pose with one leg outstretched
and her upper body bent over it. The Dying Swan is an easy target
for satire - campy, sentimental, even melodramatic - but when done well
it has the power to be very moving.

By
1907 Pavlova had become a star at the Maryinsky, but that was just the
prelude. Her need for artistic independence, the freedom to pursue her
very individual style and to dance new and different work, as well as
her need to have the spotlight all to herself led her to a solo touring
career that lasted twenty years and took her all over the world. She danced
with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes but not for long. She may have had doubts
that the company could succeed, she may have been unable to bear Diaghilev's
notorious authoritarianism or she may have hated sharing the glory with
the famous Nijinsky, the male star of the troupe.5

She
lived most of her life on trains and in hotels. Toward the end she had
to compromise by cutting difficult sections and performing only the less
demanding pieces. One of her methods for conserving stamina was to modify
her pointe shoe to make it easier to balance. It was considered cheating
at the time, but actually it was the first modern pointe shoe and no ballerina
today would even attempt toe-work without its equivalent. Pavlova took
soft pointe shoes that were too big, inserted a piece of leather under
the metatarsal for support and pounded down the platform to make it bigger
and flatter. She would then darn it so it would hold its shape. However,
the always image-conscious Pavlova wanted to appear as if daintily dancing
on only the tiniest little pointed tip of a slipper, so she scrupulously
retouched all photographs of herself to remove the broad platform of the
shoe.

In 1931 she contracted pleurisy. Doctors could have saved her life with
an operation that would have damaged her ribs and left her unable to perform.
Pavlova chose to die rather than give up dancing. As she lay dying she
is reported to have opened her eyes, raised her hand and uttered these
last words: "Get my swan costume ready."6

A few days later, at show time at the theatre where she was to have performed
The Dying Swan, the house lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and
while the orchestra played Saint-Saëns familiar score, a spotlight
moved around the empty stage as if searching in the places where Pavlova
would have been.

In her own words: "What exactly is success? For me it is to be found not
in applause, but in the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing
one's ideal. When, a small child rambling over there by the fir trees,
I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong. Happiness is like
a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon
flits away."7